Musical interlude

Bully - Days Move Slow

Friday Morning Links

 Assorted content to end your week.

- Damian Carrington confirms the consensus among climate experts that the outcome of the fossil-dominated COP28 was an utter failure, while Paige Vega interviews Bill McKibben about the reality that it's long past time to be counting on empty and vague words to reverse a breakdown in progress (and the continued carbon pollution which is exacerbating it). And Alaa Al Kourdajie, Chris Bataille and Lars Nilsson warn that weasel wording is likely to be used as an excuse to actually expand production and pollution. 

- Rob Miller discusses how carbon capture and storage is far less effective and more costly than shifting to existing renewable energy technology - meaning that the fossil fuel stooges hyping the former and seeking to suppress the latter can only be treated as climate vandals. And Anna Aglietta highlights how the addiction to constantly growing extraction is at the root of both the climate crisis and the failure of efforts to combat it.  

- Tammy Robert exposes how the Saskatchewan Party has destroyed the province's crop insurance system by taking insurance premiums into general revenues - even as it's also managed to blow up the provincial budget and destroy public services. 

- Finally, Yan Jie, Taeyoung Choi and Ziyad Al-Aly find that the long-term outcomes from COVID-19 remain far more severe than those from seasonal influenza. And the John Snow Project points out Statistics Canada's survey results showing that nearly everybody will know somebody who has suffered from long COVID - even if that reality has rarely been acknowledged. 

Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Jessica Wildfire examines how employees are being illegally forced to put their health at risk by employers determined to impose policies which facilitate the spread of COVID-19. And Craig Ellingson and Chelan Skulski report on the Alberta Medical Association's warning that the province's health care system is on the verge of collapse, while Timm Bruch reports that the UCP is trying to spin naturopathy and other quackery-for-profit as a substitute for the availability of public health care. 

- Jake Bittle calls out the large number of fossil fuel lobbyists at COP28, while Nina Lakhani reveals that hundreds of the attendees charged with working out a global response to the climate crisis have a history of actively denying its existence. So it's no surprise that the output has been grossly insufficient - according to the International Energy Agency as well as other expert participants. And Oliver Milman reports on the continued establishment focus on magical future technology as a substitute for near-term cuts to carbon pollution. 

- Andrew Nikiforuk points out that Alberta bears the dubious distinction of having the world's single most harmful methane leak. And Bob Weber reports that Saskatchewan too continues to report fictitious figures while spewing far more methane than it's bothering to measure. 

- Ryan Hogg reports on new research by IPPR and Common Wealth showing that large companies predictably capitalized on messaging about inflation by extracting massive windfall profits far exceeding any increase in costs. And Trevor Tombe and Jennifer Winter discuss the Canadian twist on  the exploitation of inflation to further enrich the already-wealthy, as the Cons use a false narrative blaming carbon pricing rather than corporate greed to try to transfer even more wealth to the top. 

- Christopher Cheung examines how the non-profit industrial complex is a poor substitute for public programs with the resources to meaningfully address social needs.

- Finally, Ian Kreitzberg reports on the UAW's ambitions to organize every automaker in the U.S. to spur broad-based gains in wages and working conditions.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Cozy cat.